Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship

Posted
on Thu, Oct 4, 2007 at 4:00 AM

Providence, R.I.’s Chris “Kites” Forgues had a mite too much brewing on 2005’s too-ambitious Peace Trials. Certainly, coruscating power-electronics were on the menu. But elements of folk and hummability, while diversifying his extremist’s sound template, compromised the underlying fury. With Hallucination Guillotine/Final Worship, Forgues returns to the business of sphincter-tightening and spine-tingling. The lopsided shuffle-drone loops of “Hallucination Guillotine” work up a grittily enchanting white-noise lather. Fitful, contorted frequencies scat over the monotonous thump of a bass drum on “Flicker Boosters,” while “Cool People” makes like an indecipherable CB-radio exchange. By contrast, “Poison Blur” and “Trespass” are virtually ambient: the former a sickly pocket of tuneless, malevolent fungi, the latter a meditative exploitation of bell-like tones.